Bloodborne & The Old Hunters Collector’s Edition Guides

Future Press gone behind the scenes with Bloodborne's creators to unearth every secret hidden within the mysterious city of Yharnam. Your hunt through the streets of Yharnam will be your most exciting and rewarding journey yet, and the road will be hard. But fear not! These guides are your key to mastering the merciless challenges and navigating the darkest depths of the city. [More]

PS4 Pro users will see a new ‘supersampling mode’ under Settings, which enables those with HDTVs (i.e., 1080p or less) to enjoy an enhanced visual experience when playing some PS4 games. With supersampling mode, games that render to a higher resolution when connected to a 4K TV will downscale to match the HDTV – allowing PS4 Pro owners to leverage the benefits of an image clarity boost even if they don’t own a 4K TV. Certain games already have ‘supersampling’ benefits as part of their ‘PS4 Pro Enhanced’ feature set, but this new mode can enhance the experience for those games that don’t already have the feature...

Result: Bloodborne runs at maximum resolution 1080p, therefore there can be no supersampling involved when playing Bloodborne.

Boost Mode has been designed to provide better performance for those legacy titles that have not been patched to take advantage of the PS4 Pro's faster CPU and its faster and double-sized GPU. This can provide a noticeable frame-rate boost to some games with variable frame-rate, and can provide frame-rate stability for games that are programmed to run at 30Hz or 60Hz.

Depending on the game, the increased CPU speed may also result in shorter load times. Boost Mode is not guaranteed to work with all titles, however, turning the setting off will allow the game to be played in a mode that replicates the standard PS4. As an aside, the older unpatched titles that run in Boost Mode are unaware that they are running on a PS4 Pro and consequently don't take full advantage of the PS4 Pro capabilities; power consumption for these games will therefore be a bit lower compared to playing a newer title.

One of the titles I was requested to look at was this new boost mode for PS4 with Bloodborne. I’ve already covered [what is] probably one of the best titles in terms of [flat CPU performance], Just Cause 3, [which] you can check at the link below and onscreen. Now, not every title will see a significant boost: thirty percent or thirty-three percent is the maximum you’re going to see at any one point unless collectively you’ve got CPU-, GPU-, and bandwidth-bound issues in one title – maybe I’ll come across those, but, by and large, this isn’t going to change the world so don’t get carried away. [One of] the titles that did suffer from performance issues [, usually with frame pacing issues], which was the biggest problem of the title, was Bloodborne. [Bloodborne] single-handedly made frame pacing a thing in this generation even though [frame pacing had] nothing to do with this generation or this title specifically at all. Now the game itself did some of this no matter where you were or what you were doing in [regard] to the type of walking, running, attacking, running away, and generally dying could cause these skips and stutters.

[Basically], the frame time is jumping between sixteen milliseconds, which is what you would expect of sixty hertz or sixty fps [(frames per second)] title, and thirty three milliseconds, which is what you would expect of a thirty hertz or thirty fps title,[then it drops] right down to fifty milliseconds, which is what you would expect of a twenty hertz or twenty fps title. What happens here is [that] the game is probably most likely double buffered – in fact, I’m pretty sure it is. What happens is when the game [framebuffer] runs out [of memory space] or it doesn’t have enough time [to remove old data to store new data], it skips the frame; it misses the budget, but it only has two frames it can render: the one that’s flipped that’s [onscreen] and the one it’s currently rendering now. If [the PS4] can’t flip the buffer, then you end up with a new frame held, so you don’t get a change in the frame at all, you end up with the same frame held over two consecutive frame points. This being a thirty fps title means you then flip to the next refresh rate, which is [sixteen milliseconds,] hence the fifty, [or forty-nine-point-nine to be precise,] millisecond time [to] thirty three. [Once] that happens and the game catches up, it then has to flip the next frame because it longer has memory left to render another frame, so you end up with a spike that goes [from] fifty milliseconds, [to] sixteen milliseconds, and then back to the thirty flat. This can happen consistently for a long period of time or randomly as you play the game; you can see it on the frame time graph on the right-hand side. You can see also that the boost mode doesn’t fix this at all – it’s exactly the same, in a sense. You will see [that] the dips are pretty much eradicated now. This is most likely [the GPU], not [the CPU], that are causing these dips below.

The motion blur, the quality of the assets, the texture quality, and [the overall draw distance] of this game is pretty immense, so thirty fps was the best [expected tolerance] from a game like this on the console [considering its specifications]. Boost mode basically means that [frame rate] doesn’t dip below thirty anymore on my tested sections; it may at go at [heavier] sections, and the game does have many more that I could test , but here and now you can see that the frame pacing issue, even though they’re not solved, [are] actually better. Throughout this tested section you can see onscreen, the analysis comes in at two-hundred and fifteen frame spikes and dips on the base PS4 and around one-hundred and twenty six on the boost mode on the PS4 pro: this means you’re getting circa forty two percent. You’ve got to take in margin of error because it’s an engine loop: nothing is going to be exactly identical; so if you knock that down, you’re again hovering around a thirty percent boost and that’s really what you’re seeing. Most likely, the game doesn’t spread all of its rendering and AI and game logic and animation across all the cores, so now this boost in performance is causing these dips, where it was running over, just to miss slightly and therefore deliver a more consistent thirty fps – [the small little boosts] are actually helping that out, but it won’t eradicate it completely because these kinds of issues are much more systemic of the code base and the engine rendering time than just a simple performance issue. If you could boost the system right up to complete all of these jobs within sixteen milliseconds, then yes, you would literally see a sixty fps title and there would be no worries at all; that isn’t possible here – that is not what is going to happen.

This small boost in CPU and GPU just smoothes out some of the issues you have [on this title] – it’s not going to change the world, and Bloodborne, unfortunately, for those hoping, is not going to be fixed by this boost mode. It is a little smoother and is a little more consistent, but don’t expect the game to be silky smooth all the way through. It still has frame pacing issues, although, like the dips, they are greatly reduced here,but they are not eradicated totally. It’s one of the smaller, lower end boosts you will see on this boost mode, but again it’s all well for those people that are that way inclined. I never really had a massive issue with Bloodborne’s frame pacing issues. You kind of get used to it after a period of time because it’s that inconsistency you kind of ignore. I know some people are well into their frame rate and, therefore, it bothers them, and I like a solid game as well as anybody else, but this game you kind of overlook the small issues like that because it’s such an amazing game to play. With that, I’m probably off to enjoy a little bit more Bloodborne since I got the game back in my PS4.